IGN Presents: The History of Grand Theft Auto

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Dropping dimes on a lifetime of girls, guns, and getting away with it.

By Rus McLaughlin

It's all about the American Dream. You start at the bottom, put in effort and time, and you make it to the top... no matter who you have to kill. Any stone player can get known and get paid if they take what they want, and survive the day. And see the next guy lining up to take what's yours and make it his. That's what makes this country great.

Gamers live the life Rockstar's built for them, fifty million of them, doing what they want and getting ahead one drive-by, one stolen ride, one felony at a time. It's a funhouse mirror on our sliding culture, envisioned by a Scot and a pair of Brits. Imitators come and go. None come close to Grand Theft Auto's excesses, successes, consequences, and stepping outside the lines. The franchise is big-time. Stocks jump at the mention of its name. So do giant-killers, lawyers, mothers, and politicians lip -- all stepping up to take their shot at a game that turned controversy into fame, and then infamy.

A life of crime ain't easy, baby.

Take the Money and Run

Scotland in the mid-80's didn't exist on gaming's radar, but that didn't stop full-time student David Jones from taking a half-done, spare time project - side-scrolling shooter Menace, written on his Commodore Amiga - into a PC expo to show it around and get some feedback. He walked out with multiple offers. Jones picked Psygnosis mostly because at two hundred miles away, the Liverpool-based publisher was the closest of the bunch.

There weren't any local developers to hire on with, so Jones founded one to facilitate his "hobby" while finishing up a computer science degree. DMA Design (for Direct Mind Access) delivered Menace in 1987 and won praise for its polished gameplay. After a second successful shooter, Blood Money, hobby shifted to career. DMA started hiring.

A throwaway test animation of tiny men marching to their explosive doom, created by programmer Mike Dailly, soon inspired DMA's first powerhouse franchise. Lemmings was a puzzler with a sadistic streak, selling more units on its first day than Menace and Blood Money ever had combined. Sequels and dozens of ports occupied DMA for years. Jones and company settled into the Lemmings business, only dropping two non-Lemming titles in-between to stay fresh.

Before the pattern fully set in, circumstances nudged Jones to break all his old habits. Sony bought out Psygnosis, his one and only publisher, and Commodore's bankruptcy announcement sunk the Amiga, his primary platform. After completing small but admired Uniracers for the SNES, DMA accepted an invite to join Midway, LucasArts and Rare on Nintendo's content "Dream Team" for the upcoming Ultra 64 console. Jones had a new home. He went to work on an exclusive launch title, Body Harvest, DMA's first 3D effort, and it did things a little differently from those other Nintendo games. You played an armed and armored soldier in a free-roaming mission to save humanity from hungry alien carnivores, able to jump into any vehicle you found. Less fortunate humans, whether they fell to invaders, careless driving or over-aggressive marksmanship, died screaming in a haze of 64-bit blood.

It didn't get a pass from Nintendo EAD lead Shigeru Miyamoto. Mario's creator wanted more puzzles, less gore.

Jones' opinion differed. The aggressively over-the-top gameplay and open-world environments fit like personally tailored brass knuckles. It needed more, not different. Body Harvest fell off Nintendo's schedule (to be picked up years later by Midway), but DMA was already moving on a newer, better project. Programming had an engine that simulated a top-down cityscape, and centering the camera on a moving object gave it a incredible sense of speed. Jones quickly dreamed up a cops-and-robbers chase game around that dynamic, set in a living, breathing city where the player could go anywhere and do anything. Then he got bold: The player wouldn't be the cop.

The core problem remained. If Nintendo objected to occasionally splattering the odd civilian, no way would they ever accept the criminal activities on Jones' mind. He needed a new publisher... somebody willing to piss a few people off.

It's All In the Game

Sam and Dan Houser were the prep school sons of a London jazz club owner, but their addiction was East Coast rap and America's growing hip-hop movement. Looking to break in, they took jobs at BMG Music, scouting and signing British acts to sub-labels and hunting for ways up the ladder. When a video game division launched in 1993, they jumped to BMG Interactive with big, big plans. If music had a culture, gaming did, too, and the Housers -- with zero development experience between them -- decided that culture was mad, bad, and dangerous to know. Their product would reflect the attitude and sell a lifestyle around it.

Unfortunately, game developers didn't get the memo. BMG releases like Exhumed and Off-World Interceptor Extreme, both for the poorly performing Sega Saturn, didn't exactly live up to the Housers' vision of unimaginable coolness.